The Best Books: July

Jul 8, 2013, 9:17 a.m.

By Lester Gingold

The Best Times

Mortality, Christopher Hitchens, 104 pages, Published by 12, $22.99

Christopher Hitchens, was a contributing editor to Vanity Fair and the Atlantic and author of numerous books, including works on Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine and George Orwell. I read his writings for years in Vanity Fair, and knew of his reputation as an outspoken atheist. Then I heard that he had esophageal cancer and was living on borrowed time.

This award-winning columnist, while on a book tour with his newest book Hitch-22, suddenly found himself being deported “from the country of the well across the stark frontier that marks off the land of the malady.”

Hitchens continued his beautiful writings in his columns for the next 15 months, until his death at 62 at MD Anderson Clinic in Houston.

Mortality is the exemplary story of one man’s refusal to cower in the face of the unknown, as well as a searching look at the human predicament.

You may not agree with his philosophy, but you will certainly find this a significant piece of literature that is an affirmation of the dignity and worth of man.

I only wish that I could have known Hitchens -- for I am sure that just 30 minutes of conversation (before he lost his voice completely) would be a lifetime memory.